Religions have succeeded

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad you are being very evasive.
It is impossible to move on with this process without the relevant accurate information.
The fact that you are unwilling to provide it suggests to me that you are aware of the impossibility of the task yet will draw it out as long as possible in the hope that I might give up.
If you want to stop now it's ok I won't think any less of you than I already do!

I think i've given you all the information I can give. perhaps you need to check what might be holding you back and what you might actually clinging onto. However I think you and Hillside are trying a conversion job on me although I have to say I didn't expect the inquisition.

[Sebastian Toe]

However I think you and Hillside are trying a conversion job on me although I have to say I didn't expect the inquisition.

Oh dear, conspiracy theories now Vlad?
You'll tell me next that the earth is flat!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

You just cannot help yourself, can you Vlad. I mean if there was ever a case of pot and kettle this is it.

So apparently the atheists here think all people of religion are a threat

No I said the New Atheists were given that Outrider had commented that 9/11 was a factor in their appearence

- news to me,

see previous

I'm married to one. Yet you try to demonstrate this by basically indicating that you think atheists are a threat.

No, new atheists many of whom I see as imflammatory

.

If there is anyone on this MB who seems to have an irrational view that all people of a particular faith group represent a threat it is you Vlad, with you irrational view that atheists are a threat and your bizarre obsession with a few academic philosophers and biologists who you see somehow as akin to mass murderers. If you want atheist bogeymen who were mass murderers there are a few (Stalin, Pol Pot to name a couple), not that I think their atheism was their driving philosophy. But Dawkins, Harris - I mean, get a life Vlad.

Dawkins introduced a fair bit of confrontation into our national way of discourse , let's not forget that, with his enemy within rhetoric and Harris took the nuclear option.

[Nearly Sane]

Moderator: There have been some posts removed as they relate to an accusation of sock puppetry. The Mod team  take such accusations very seriously, and given that, if someone wants to raise the possibility, they should DM the Mod team.

[ProfessorDavey]

Dawkins introduced a fair bit of confrontation into our national way of discourse ...

So have all sorts of people, including (but not limited to) current and former ABoCs, Cardinals of Westminster and current and former Popes. What exactly is your point - I thought this was a country that supported free speech, but you seem to want it only one way - those from a religious persuasion able to say what they want, however inflammatory yet atheists should sit quietly and never say a word.

I don't see Dawkin's views as being any more inflammatory as pretty standard rhetoric by mainstream religions, for example towards gay people and ... err .. often towards atheists.

... Harris took the nuclear option.

Oh, this hoary old myth yet again - Harris did not take the nuclear option. Can you please point us to any nuclear weapons that Harris has launched please.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

So have all sorts of people, including (but not limited to) current and former ABoCs, Cardinals of Westminster and current and former Popes.

Not really AoC's are quite mild in there approach Ditto Cardinals of Westminster and as for leaders of the other churches, you never here from them. regarding religion Ian Paisley perhaps and what I see as a bit of a slip committed by singling out the sins of Jeremy Corbyn by the AoC and the chief Rabbi . Controversial Rabbis, Imams, Pastors,  etc only get 15 minutes of fame but Dawkins is a national darling because the media love the cloud of controversy that he generates 

What exactly is your point - I thought this was a country that supported free speech

and Dawkins never goes short of his share that's for sure

, but you seem to want it only one way - those from a religious persuasion able to say what they want, however inflammatory yet atheists should sit quietly and never say a word.

No I believe i've promoted the idea atheists having a seat in the house of Lords and my view on letting atheists have a spot on thought for the day has changed too.

I don't see Dawkin's views as being any more inflammatory as pretty standard rhetoric by mainstream religions, for example towards gay people and ... err .. often towards atheists.

I think it is rather those wishing to extinguish faith in God to get a new bit of linguistic piracy they want who are confrontational here, The linguistic piracy being of course same sex holy matrimony something that wasn't a thing until very recently. Gay people can get married in church in any case. Can you really look into anyone's face and say your motivations aren't anti ecclesiastical?Or Sandy Toksvig who announced her confrontation with the AoC in which she would march in head down shoulders up( ..............what?.........you mean she always walks around like that?)

Oh, this hoary old myth yet again - Harris did not take the nuclear option. Can you please point us to any nuclear weapons that Harris has launched please.

Fortunately he never got anywhere near to the keys to the arsenal.

[ProfessorDavey]

Not really AoC's are quite mild in there approach Ditto Cardinals of Westminster ...

So are Oxford academics - in terms of presentation I think Dawkins is much more akin to Welby than Paisley. In terms of presentation Dawkins, Nichols, Murphy-O'Connor, Williams and Welby are all pretty 'mild. But that's not the point - it isn't about presentation but the message and indeed, the actions. And Nichols, Murphy-O'Connor, Williams and Welby's message and indeed their actions are very far from mild. These are people who not only promote a message of discrimination, they actually deliver that discrimination in action - e.g. through refusing to allow gay marriage or blessing, and refusing to support equality for women in the priesthood as examples.

And there is plenty of crude prejudicial messages, even if delivered is a soft, mild manner - e.g. Murphy-O'Connor asserting that atheists aren't fully human.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

So are Oxford academics - in terms of presentation I think Dawkins is much more akin to Welby than Paisley. In terms of presentation Dawkins, Nichols, Murphy-O'Connor, Williams and Welby are all pretty 'mild. But that's not the point - it isn't about presentation but the message and indeed, the actions. And Nichols, Murphy-O'Connor, Williams and Welby's message and indeed their actions are very far from mild. These are people who not only promote a message of discrimination, they actually deliver that discrimination in action - e.g. through refusing to allow gay marriage or blessing, and refusing to support equality for women in the priesthood as examples.

And there is plenty of crude prejudicial messages, even if delivered is a soft, mild manner - e.g. Murphy-O'Connor asserting that atheists aren't fully human.

I think the bench mark here is the atheist bus. A christian denomenational bus would promote religion, the atheist bus sought to demote religion head to head as it were. See the difference in approach. Atheist bus- attack their idea, Christian bus, promote your own. To date there's only been an atheist bus with it's, stop worrying about God and everything will be like the cumfy sofa ad message.

[ekim]

Yes I would agree that it would be difficult to compare inner experiences. On this forum we seem to differentiate between "facts" and experiences which we believe are true - or rather we believe that our interpretations of the experience are true.

It seems to be a convention that fact claims need to be backed up by objective evidence, whereas opinions we believe are true are asserted and argued for. We don't state they are beliefs but we can just apply the test of whether the statements are verifiable/ falsifiable. If they aren't then presumably our statements are beliefs or opinions.

Some might see that as a battle between the self centred mind and the 'heart'.

"God speaks to the ears of the heart of everyone but it is not every heart which hears Him; His voice is louder than the thunder and His light is clearer than the Sun - if only one could see and hear; in order to do that one must remove this solid wall, this barrier, this Self." ..... Rumi

[Walt Zingmatilder]

And there is plenty of crude prejudicial messages, even if delivered is a soft, mild manner - e.g. Murphy-O'Connor asserting that atheists aren't fully human.

Oh I don't think Dawkins is averse to telling religious people they have the minds of imprinted Ducklings or are sheep in his mild mannered style.

Dawkins is surrounded by people telling us 'what the professor really meant was.' So let's give Murphy O'connor a break and suggest that what the Cardinal really meant is full humanity is only achieved when the image of God in any person is fully restored...And if the Cardinal didn't mean that he can fuck off!

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

What, there is overwhelming evidence that can be observed because it's all around us? What about the parts of the universe we don't have evidence for?

What about them? This is the fundamental mistake you’ve always made about PE – that it’s in some way a top down theory of absolute, universal truths rather than it’s actual meaning of a bottom up theory that the most reliable way to accrue knowledge is to build it brick-by-brick as it’s validated by methodological materialism (observation, experimentation, peer review etc).

Read the definition THAT YOU POSTED ffs: “…an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience”.

Can you see anything at all there to suggest that the theory also claims to be the answer to “life, the universe and everything”? There’s no way of knowing whether PE could in theory be the most reliable approach to knowing everything there is to know, and nor for that matter of knowing whether a more reliable philosophical position on knowledge gathering might not one day emerge. That’s why I said: “That’s not to say that everything we think we “know” isn’t, say, instead a fever dream of a pan-galactic kid on a computer game, but it’s all we verifiably have to navigate the world we appear to occupy.” (Reply 1169.)

It seems you are saying the whole is just like the part we can see. You can add the fallacy of composition to your hypocrisy of demanding empirical evidence then not providing it.

You do so love a straw man don’t you. Needless to say, I’m saying no such thing. 

Were not asking for one theory, though we are asking whether this method for getting evidence can get the evidence for philosophical empiricism and by the looks of it it can't apart from confusing methodological empiricism with philosophical mechanism.. Sorry, you'll have to try harder or own up to there not being any.

Yes it can and does, provided you don’t straw man PE to mean something entirely other than what it actually means (see above, plus the definition YOU posted).

[Alan Burns]

If you want atheist bogeymen who were mass murderers there are a few (Stalin, Pol Pot to name a couple), not that I think their atheism was their driving philosophy. But Dawkins, Harris - I mean, get a life Vlad.

The likes of Stalin and Pol Pot were destroyers of earthly lives.
Dawkins and Harris would appear to be out to destroy the faith of those who believe.
Dawkins in particular is seen to get visibly angry when confronted with people who witness to their sincere faith.
The faith of human souls is far more precious than their earthly bodies, which is why the current trend of aggressive atheism is seen to be so dangerous.

[Sebastian Toe]

The likes of Stalin and Pol Pot were destroyers of earthly lives.

As were the likes of the Crusaders and the Witch burners.
Shall we trade lists of despots and vigilantes?

[Sebastian Toe]

Dawkins and Harris would appear to be out to destroy the faith of those who believe.

Evidence?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The likes of Stalin and Pol Pot were destroyers of earthly lives.

Yes they were.

Dawkins and Harris would appear to be out to destroy the faith of those who believe.

No really. What they’re “out to do” as I see it is to use the rebuttals of arguments attempted to justify faiths to make a case for the removal of the unwarranted rights and privileges those faiths arrogate to themselves. 
 

Dawkins in particular is seen to get visibly angry when confronted with people who witness to their sincere faith.

I’ve seen him exasperated occasionally (reasonably so too), but not angry. Do you have any evidence for that claim?

The faith of human souls is far more precious than their earthly bodies, which is why the current trend of aggressive atheism is seen to be so dangerous.

“The faith of human souls” is just another of your blind faith claims, and “aggressive atheism” is an invention too. 
 

[ProfessorDavey]

Dawkins and Harris would appear to be out to destroy the faith of those who believe.
Dawkins in particular is seen to get visibly angry when confronted with people who witness to their sincere faith.
The faith of human souls is far more precious than their earthly bodies, which is why the current trend of aggressive atheism is seen to be so dangerous.

If faith is so weak that an Oxford academic writing a few books and engaging in lectures and debates is going to shake it to the core - then that faith seems terribly fragile. Why is this faith so weak and fragile that you seem to imply that it needs to be protected from free speech of this nature.

[Sebastian Toe]

The faith of human souls is far more precious than their earthly bodies, which is why the current trend of aggressive atheism is seen to be so dangerous.

Surely someone who has faith is not going to take notice of someone who has not?
Or is their faith so weak that they change their mind like they can change their brand of coffee?

[Dicky Underpants]

Dawkins in particular is seen to get visibly angry when confronted with people who witness to their sincere faith.

Try looking at the youtube of Dawkins interviewing the 'Reverend' Ted Haggard, and judge which one is angry.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

What about them? This is the fundamental mistake you’ve always made about PE – that it’s in some way a top down theory of absolute, universal truths rather than it’s actual meaning of a bottom up theory that the most reliable way to accrue knowledge is to build it brick-by-brick as it’s validated by methodological materialism (observation, experimentation, peer review etc).

I'm not sure that gives you philosophical empiricism but merely more methodological empiricism BHS.

The same painstaking bottom up process of starting with what you can observe etc. does however lead to the argument from contingency and the principle of sufficient reason.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I'm not sure that gives you philosophical empiricism but merely more methodological empiricism BHS.

Now try to comprehend and address what I actually said to you. PE is a theory about the most reliable way to accrete knowledge within the context of our current level of understanding. ME validates it, and when it does validate it we call the result "knowledge". Treating something as knowledge rather than as just guessing is useful because it creates the solutions we then use to engage functionally with the world we appear to occupy. 

That's it. All the endless straw manning you've done over the years about PE is still just that - straw manning.   

The same painstaking bottom up process of starting with what you can observe etc. does however lead to the argument from contingency and the principle of sufficient reason.

Of course it doesn't, for reasons that have been explained to you endlessly both here and before.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Now try to comprehend and address what I actually said to you. PE is a theory about the most reliable way to accrete knowledge within the context of our current level of understanding.

Nobody denies the uses of methodological empiricism as useful. You would have to prove though that it is the most reliable way of getting knowledge rather than merely the most reliable way of getting empirical knowledge

........ME validates it

ME does not validate PE.
You have said ME builds PE step by Step. We surely do not have all the steps available.  otherwise we would have had to reach a point where PE had enough ''bricks'' to become PE.(emerge from it) or at least become an emergence of the type you aren't prepared to accept. That is absurd. So we are forced to conclude by some mystical or philosophical process which doesn't produce empirical evidence that ME validates PE.

Please show your working out.

Let me put a different conclusion to your explanation . People have been so used to doing this that some poor sods have confused what they do with the way the world is.

There is nothing in ME necessitating any mysterious leap over the explanatory or evidential gap to get to Philosophical empiricism. 

[Outrider]

No I said the New Atheists were given that Outrider had commented that 9/11 was a factor in their appearence

Not in their appearance, necessarily, but in the interest that they generated. Professor Dawkins had been outspoken about religion long before, and it was not one of his explicit motivations, whereas it does seem (from the outside) to have had quite a profound effect on Sam Harris' thought processes.

No, new atheists many of whom I see as imflammatory

The only difference between 'New' atheists and their forebears is that they're not as content to keep quiet.

Dawkins introduced a fair bit of confrontation into our national way of discourse , let's not forget that, with his enemy within rhetoric and Harris took the nuclear option.

Professor Dawkins is not confrontational, he is quite personable and genteel in his discussions with people, he's just not prepared to stop asking the obvious questions. The fact that he can, and is, denounced as a 'Militant' atheist for politely espousing views, whilst it takes the actual delivery of bombs and guns to have a Muslim or a Christian defined as militant shows that the yardstick against which the 'New' atheists are being measured are not consistent with everyone else.

Sam Harris' rhetoric can, at times, verge closer to a call to arms, I'd agree, but I'd say he still falls a long way short of the standard it takes for people of faith to be viewed as potentially dangerous. It's almost as though we fear bombs and guns, and the religious fear questions.

O.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Nobody denies the uses of methodological empiricism as useful. You would have to prove though that it is the most reliable way of getting knowledge rather than merely the most reliable way of getting empirical knowledge

Nope. If you want to try that line, then you have to establish first that there even is such a thing a non-empirical knowledge and second that you have some way of distinguishing it from just guessing – you know, like PE and ME do for empirical knowledge.

ME does not validate PE.

Of course it does.
 

You have said ME builds PE step by Step.

No I haven’t. What I have said though is that it validates PE bottom up, one step at a time.

We surely do not have all the steps available.

I know – that’s why I said: “PE is a theory about the most reliable way to accrete knowledge within the context of our current level of understanding”. That’s not a problem for the empiricist though as empiricism makes no claim to and has no need for “all the steps” to anything. All it needs is to have sufficient steps to distinguish knowledge from guessing at knowledge.   

…otherwise we would have had to reach a point where PE had enough ''bricks'' to become PE.(emerge from it) or at least become an emergence of the type you aren't prepared to accept. That is absurd. So we are forced to conclude by some mystical or philosophical process which doesn't produce empirical evidence that ME validates PE.

Gibberish. What are you trying to say here?

Please show your working out.

Working out for your incoherence? I have none. What I do have though is perfectly simple arguments I’ve set out here and in previous posts. Try to comprehend and engage with them rather than collapse into straw men and incoherence.   

Let me put a different conclusion to your explanation . People have been so used to doing this that some poor sods have confused what they do with the way the world is.

There is nothing in ME necessitating any mysterious leap over the explanatory or evidential gap to get to Philosophical empiricism.

There is provided you don’t pretend PE means something other than its actual meaning – suggest you revisit the definition of it THAT YOU POSTED and go from there. 

[ProfessorDavey]

Dawkins is surrounded by people telling us 'what the professor really meant was.' So let's give Murphy O'connor a break and suggest that what the Cardinal really meant is full humanity is only achieved when the image of God in any person is fully restored...And if the Cardinal didn't mean that he can fuck off!

Are you really claiming that Dawkins is surrounded by fewer people telling us 'what he really meant' than a guy in a senior leadership position in one of the largest (actually perhaps the largest) organisations in the world, with layer upon layer of hierarchy, much of which is all about getting the message across. Laughable.

[ProfessorDavey]

So let's give Murphy O'connor a break and suggest that what the Cardinal really meant is full humanity is only achieved when the image of God in any person is fully restored...And if the Cardinal didn't mean that he can fuck off!

Actually this wasn't just an off the cuff comment, but one in an interview picking up on previous comments he had made in a similar manner, where the interviewer clearly indicated that some people (atheists and secularists) may have found his previous comments offensive. So he had ample opportunity in his response in the interview to clarify that he was not implying that atheists were not fully human. Yet he doubled down:

Roger Bolton – a lot of church leaders speaking on national matters sound rather defensive but you’ve gone on the attack because you’ve talked about secularists having an “impoverished understanding of what it is to be human” they might find that quite offensive mightn’t they?
 
Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor - I think what I said was true, of course whether a person is atheist or any other...there is in fact, in my view, something not totally human, if they leave out the transcendent. If they leave out an aspect of what I believe everyone was made for, which is, uh, a search for transcendent meaning, we call it God. Now if you say that has no place, then I feel that it is a diminishment of what it is to be a human, because to be human in the sense I believe humanity is directed because made by God, I think if you leave that out then you are not fully human.

Pretty clear - don't believe in god = not fully human.